


The Offer

by shara



Category: Carry On Series - Rainbow Rowell
Genre: Arguments, Baz is long-suffering, Happy Ending, M/M, Mentions of canon-typical violence to animals, Post-Canon, Simon and the internet, Simon hates Lamb, Simon makes terrible decisions, Spoilers for Book 2: Wayward Son, bad relationship modeling from Simon Snow, just a little blood drinking, tiny sex scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-27
Updated: 2020-01-27
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:39:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22431982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shara/pseuds/shara
Summary: Simon has an idea. Baz hates it.
Relationships: Tyrannus Basilton "Baz" Pitch/Simon Snow
Comments: 2
Kudos: 117





	The Offer

It took Simon almost a year before he could convince Baz to try it. Not that Simon pushed...well, he pushed a little. 

They even had sex before they ended up trying it. And that was an experience that had distracted Simon for several months. All new closeness and sensations—Simon had felt like he was coming alive under Baz’s hands that first time. And even back then, before the idea had been a solid thought in his mind, when Baz would take him into his mouth, lips stretched open, tongue flicking against the tip of his cock, a small part of him had imagined the feeling of Baz’s fangs dropping down, and sliding against his skin. 

But Baz’s fangs hadn’t dropped. Baz was always, even at his most vulnerable, exercising control.

The first time Simon had suggested it, Baz had thought he was joking. “Ha ha very funny, Snow,” he’d said, rolling his eyes. And then, after realizing that Simon was serious, had yelled, “ _What?! Have you lost it?_ ” 

The argument had continued in this vein for some time until Baz had said with finality, “It’s not safe; we’re not doing it; stop asking.”

Simon did stop for a bit. And it wasn’t as though he had a ton of time to spend considering it. He had finally started going back to university after restarting sessions with his therapist. She had suggested that he try to do something creative as he had spent most of his life in “survival mode” and never had a chance to explore his own emotional depths. It was odd, and difficult, to examine his own life in this way, but he decided to sign up for some art classes and could understand what she meant. The sense of purposelessness that had pervaded his life after he had graduated from Watford and lost his magic couldn’t take hold while he was shaping vases in his pottery class or carving patterns into wood blocks. It helped that for once, he was able to focus on a process, his own progress, and not any end goal. The world had already been saved.

He and Baz had started living together again but this time it was nice, not tense like when they had been roommates at Watford, or the first year afterwards when he had lived with Penny and had sunk into the despair of his own losses. They cooked together and cuddled together and in the evenings, Baz bent over his economics textbooks at the kitchen table and Simon sprawled on the couch with his sketchbook and drew studies of him, over and over.

But occasionally, very very occasionally, Simon brought it up. 

“I know you have no sense of self-preservation,” Baz would say, “but even you have to see how crazy this idea is.”

“I think we should consider the facts,” Simon said, trying to channel Penelope. He had drawn a chart on the whiteboard they used for their grocery list. _What we know_ was the heading on the left side of the chart, and _What we don’t know_ was on the right. Under _What we know_ , he’d written _Lamb did it_. 

“You hate Lamb,” Baz pointed out correctly. “And now you want to follow his example?”

Admittedly, Simon had only written it down because he couldn’t think of anything else that they actually knew about this. 

“It’s a data point,” Simon said. “It’s like science. We would be trying to repeat it, like you repeat experiments, but in a controlled environment.”

Baz frowned but didn’t immediately argue with him. Simon was proud of himself for thinking of an academic argument. Years of being Penny’s best friend had taught him how to appeal to Baz’s considerable nerdy side.

“Look,” said Simon. “I know there’s a lot we don’t know about this, but will you at least consider it? Like, seriously think about it.”

But of course Baz wouldn’t agree to do it unless they set up plenty of safeguards. One day, he brought home a stick of wood and looked at Simon meaningfully. Simon stared at him.

“This is going to be a last resort,” Baz explained calmly. “I want you to have it in your hand in case you have to defend yourself.”

It took him a few seconds to get it and then Simon nearly lost it. “ _Are you fucking kidding me?_ You think I’m going to _stab_ you—I’d rather you Turned me first—I—God—what the _fuck_ —”

Baz went sharp and tense like a cat, little spots of color high in his cheeks. “You don’t know what you’re talking about—how could I live with myself knowing that I did that to you—”

That fight was the worst one they had about it, both of them hurling accusations at each other, managing to hurt each other in the worst ways, the way they used to back when they were enemies. Partway through yelling that only a sociopath would think that someone should be prepared to kill their boyfriend, Simon remembered the communication skills his therapist had tried to teach him and forced himself to take deep breaths to calm down. 

_Use I-statements to explain how you feel...Empathize with the other person's feelings...Use your words Simon Snow…_

_I am so upset you would ask me to do this. You’re asking me to kill you for fuck’s sake. I could never do that to you. I refuse to stab my boyfriend with a wooden stake no matter how much he asks._

Something from the year of therapy must have helped because they both managed not to storm out of the apartment and in the end Simon agreed to an uneasy compromise. The stake would be kept nearby, within arm’s reach, but Simon wouldn’t hold it in his hand, and he bloody wouldn’t keep it pointed at Baz’s chest while they do the deed as Baz had wanted. In the end, Simon allowed Baz to whisper the spell over the end of the stick, though he couldn’t stop himself from glowering at it. “ _ **Sharp as a knife**_.” The wood obediently sharpened to a point under his wand. 

Later, Simon tried to kiss away the unhappy lines on Baz’s face. “I’m sorry I was so angry earlier,” he whispered, his earlier defensiveness and rage fallen away in the darkness. They did this sometimes still, kissed in the dark in bed, like they used to before they had started having sex, chaste and safe.

“I know, Simon Snow,” Baz said as he entwined their fingers together, sighing into his skin.

*

Baz’s other demands were a little more reasonable. 

“We’re only going to try this after I’ve already drank something else. Immediately after. And we have to keep a spare animal nearby, in case I end up getting thirsty again somehow.”

“Are you even going to want to drink my blood if you’ve drank right before?” Simon asked skeptically.

Baz looked at him quietly. “Snow,” he said, shame twisting his mouth. “I always want to drink your blood.”

Baz had admitted to him once, after a lot of prodding, that he could smell human blood, that it smelled delicious and warm, like bread baking in an oven. Penny, he had told him, smelled like treacle and chocolate, sugar sweet, and Simon--Simon smelled like butter and a little bit like a campfire. Simon hadn’t been able to help but think about the cherry scones he used to love at Watford, the way the butter would melt into the fluffy softness, the way it tasted, to him, like home.

“Why do you want this so much?” Baz had asked him more than once.

“I want to find out what’s possible,” Simon had said. “And I’d rather that you tried feeding on me over some other random human.”

“Are you seriously jealous of the fact that I might Turn someone else into a vampire?” Baz’s voice was withering. Simon chose not to dignify this with a response.

The truth was, he couldn’t adequately explain why he wanted Baz to try feeding on him so much, although he’d had to consider it many times over the past year to satisfy Baz’s frustrated questions. Ever since Baz had told them what Lamb had done to that tourist in Vegas, how he had fed on him and let him go, to seemingly no harm, Simon had felt the implications hit him in shockwaves. _Does this mean vampires don’t have to be murderers? What else is wrong about what we know about them? Do other vampires know this? Does this mean Baz doesn’t have to starve?_ And that night in the hotel room with Penelope and Shepard, as he listened to Baz tell the story, he’d also seen on Baz’s face a tiny bit of hope.

Or he thought he had anyway, for all that Baz would admit to being even curious about feeding on a human. 

“This isn’t a game to me, Snow,” Baz would snarl. “I can’t just try it once and go back to never having it again. It could change something in me.”

“You don’t know that. Nothing we’ve read online says anything like ‘ _you’re going to be overcome by bloodlust_ ’ or whatever. And if you do want to do it more often, I don’t know, we could work out some kind of schedule—”

“A SCHEDULE—”

That had been the end of any reasoned discussion that day. And okay, Simon wasn’t really sure how his body would handle regular doses of bloodletting. Perhaps having a vampire drain your blood was different from letting a nurse draw it with a syringe down at the hospital. But the point was, they wouldn’t know until they tried it, would they?

But mainly to shut up Baz’s argument that everything they knew about vampires told them this was a bad idea, Simon reached out to Shepard for help. The man had acquired a surprising amount of knowledge about magic and magical creatures before ever meeting them (granted, not all of it correct) and Simon thought he could at least point them in the right direction. And he sure as fuck wasn’t going to reach out to Lamb. 

Shepard had sent him links to internet forums where people claiming to be pixies, trolls, and nymphs discussed magic and potions and real estate. If only Penny’s mother knew...the Coven’s rules about secrecy were clearly seen as more of a suggestion than anything else in this part of the internet. Simon read his way through the threads and posts in fascination. He had never paid much attention when they were learning about magical creatures at Watford. He had always relied on Penny or his own magic to get himself through any interactions with them. But after reading a banshee’s graphic description of her sexual encounter with a wood-demon, he thought he might have paid more attention if they had learned about things like this.

He dug through the rabbithole of websites, and possibly several computer viruses, to end up at a website called The Crypt. Barring the fact that it looked like it was made in the 90s (rectangles everywhere with red text on a black background) it seemed to have more accurate information about vampires than other pages he’d seen. It mentioned that vampires not being able to see themselves in mirrors was a myth, named certain hotels and restaurants in Las Vegas and London that Simon knew for a fact catered to vampires, and was overall written in the tone of a helpful blog.

“This is exactly the kind of thing we’re looking for,” Simon told Baz excitedly, bringing the laptop over to the kitchen table where Baz had his economics homework spread out. “Listen to this: ' _Tips and Tricks on Coexisting with Normals. Tip 1: To feed on a Normal without drawing attention to oneself, take notice of the amount of blood being drained._ ' And look, they have a chart showing how much blood a person has by their age and gender.”

Baz looked down at the screen with an eyebrow raised. It always made Simon a little jealous that he could raise one eyebrow without the other. "That's...kind of disgusting, Snow."

Simon ignored this. " _Average male_ ," he read. " _12 pints. If you drink less than a quarter of a human's blood volume, they will recover and retain their Normal self. Anything more and you take the risk of their body being unable to replenish their blood volume. Be sure to prevent any exchange of blood from yourself to a Normal—this could cause the Normal to be Turned._ " Simon looked thoughtfully at Baz. “I guess that confirms what you’ve always thought, right? You would tell me to wash my hands if I ever got any of your blood on me.”

Baz looked a little green. “Maybe...” he allowed. “How do we know any of this information is correct? Anyone could write anything on the internet.”

“Everything else I’ve read here looks right,” Simon said. He scanned the page further. “Oh look, it says here that animal blood doesn’t have the same nutritional content as human blood. See, you’re not getting all your vitamins by draining strays in the alleyways.”

Baz glared at him.

*

Finally, after Simon had started thinking that Baz might put it off forever out of sheer stubbornness, Baz said, “Okay. Okay, we can try it this weekend.” He was rubbing a hand over his face out of frustration as he said it, but Simon still chalked it up as a win.

Simon offered to get the sacrificial backup animal, mainly because he didn’t want to leave it to Baz and give him something else to delay over. He went to a pet store after his glass-blowing class on Friday and bought a small black and white guinea pig that sniffed at his finger curiously through its cage, whiskers quivering. He tried to pick one that looked a little runty because he thought it would be less likely to be bought by an actual customer. He suspected the store probably put down the unsold ones after a while anyway, and this way it would do someone some good. A small part of him wondered if this was an especially callous way to think about an animal that some people might love as a pet but he shrugged it off. If the choice was between keeping Baz fed and healthy, or a guinea pig, he would pick Baz every time.

Baz was washing the dishes when Simon walked in with the cage. He frowned at it as Simon set it on the coffee table. Simon knew what he was thinking. The guinea pig made their decision final in a way that none of their discussions had, so Simon was forcing Baz’s hand a little by buying it. But hey, he _had_ agreed.

He still didn’t like seeing Baz look so prickly though, so he went into the kitchen and eased up behind him, wrapped his hands around his waist and nosed at the line of his tense jaw, wanting to comfort him. Baz didn’t put down the plate he was washing to hug him back, but he relaxed by degrees. 

“Let’s do it tonight,” Simon said softly. “Or I’ve got to go back to the store to pick up guinea pig kibble.”

Baz huffed a small laugh under his breath and Simon gave him a squeeze. He dropped a kiss on Baz’s cheek and let go.

“Okay,” Baz said finally. “But we have to wait until after I feed.”

Later that night, after they’d had dinner and Baz had slipped on a dark sweatshirt and left, Simon cleared away the area around the coffee table. He arranged the guinea pig cage to be within easy access and laid out the stake Baz had sharpened next to it. 

_Maybe I should be tied to something, just in case_ , Baz had suggested seriously once when they were brainstorming safeguards. Torn with the instant hard-on his body had tried to give him at this image, and equally instant anger at Baz’s insistence that he was going to turn into a raging monster at the first taste of human blood, the better part of Simon’s nature had prevailed and he had refused the idea. This would have to do for their safeguards.

When Baz came home from feeding, Simon was waiting expectantly for him on the couch. Baz’s eyes took in the setup before he turned away to unlace his trainers. He looked tense, but finally resolute. Simon felt a small spike of excitement go through him. They were finally going to find out if this would work. He also thought, unable to help himself, _Take that, Lamb!_

Baz came over the couch to sit next to Simon and laid his wand on the table next to the cage. He turned to face him, nervously pulling on his sweatshirt cuffs. His cheeks had pinked up from the blood he had just drank. 

“I don’t know if anybody’s ever been this eager to be bitten by a vampire,” Baz said to him dryly.

Simon snorted. “Wasn’t there a famous book series about wanting to get bitten by a vampire?”

Baz grinned for the first time that evening. “Are you comparing yourself to Bella Swan, Snow?”

“Of course you know her name,” Simon said, rolling his eyes. He could feel Baz starting to relax and it made him relax too. He scooted closer to Baz, trying to subtly angle his neck towards him.

Baz’s eyes flickered to it and back to meet his. “Right,” he said. “So I think we shouldn’t try it with your neck.”

“Why not?” Simon asked surprised. _Wasn’t that the whole point?_

“It just seems a little...risky,” Baz said, looking uneasy. “I think if I bite your arm or something, it would have the same effect. And I wouldn’t be cutting into any essential arteries.”

Simon decided not to argue with him. He pushed up the sleeve of his right arm and held it out to Baz. Baz took his hand gently in his right hand and twined their fingers together, his palm supporting the back of Simon’s hand. His lashes fluttered as he looked down on Simon’s arm, and ran the thumb of his left hand down Simon’s forearm, pressing lightly on his skin, almost like a nurse looking for a vein. Simon felt heat coming up to pink his own cheeks. 

Baz looked up to meet his eyes, his thumb paused halfway down Simon’s forearm, tapping a spot he was apparently satisfied with. “Are you ready?” he asked softly.

“Yes,” Simon breathed.

Baz didn’t move. “If at any point you change your mind—”

“I know,” Simon interrupted.

“If you see me losing control or—”

“ _Baz!_ I know!”

Baz looked at him, looked long and deep. “Don’t be afraid to hurt me,” he said finally.

It was then that Simon finally understood the extent of what he was asking Baz to do. To let go of the control he had spent his whole life practicing, to finally give in to the hunger. He understood now that to Baz, this was shame, this was betrayal, this went against everything he had been taught. But he was willing to do it for Simon.

Simon couldn’t help it. He leaned in to close the small distance between them, and pressed his lips against Baz’s. _Thank you_ , he tried to say with his kiss. _I’m sorry_. When he pulled away, he thought that maybe some of the guilt had left Baz’s face. 

“Okay,” whispered Baz.

Simon squeezed their fingers together. “Are you ready?” he asked Baz back this time. 

Baz nodded, taking a deep breath and looked down at Simon’s arm again.

“Don’t forget your fangs,” Simon said in a stage whisper, unable to help himself.

Baz rolled his eyes. “Crowley save me,” he muttered, but after a moment of focus, his fangs slid down over bottom lip. 

He lifted Simon’s arm up, and bent his head over the softest part of his forearm, near the elbow. _It’s going to hurt_ , Baz had warned him, and he braced himself. But when Baz’s fangs pierced his skin, it hurt only a little. And he could feel when Baz started drinking his blood, because a curious haze fell over him. He felt relaxed, heavy, slumberous. Distantly, he felt himself leaning limply against the couch. Baz noticed and stopped drinking instantly, licking the opening of the wound clean and pulling his fangs back in. He grabbed his wand from the coffee table and tapped it against Simon’s arm. 

“ _ **Kiss it better**_ ,” he said, and the cut healed instantly and Simon’s head started clearing. Baz waved his wand in a circle around him. “ _ **No pain, no gain**_ ,” he said, but since Simon hadn’t been in pain to begin with, it didn’t seem to do anything.

“Are you ok?” Baz asked worriedly, helping him sit up straight on the couch. “How do you feel? Are you going to pass out?”

Simon took stock of himself. He felt fine. The strangest part had been the fog that had fallen on him. Baz had told him that he thought a vampire bite might contain some kind of relaxant, to keep the victim docile after the initial bite. But the spell seemed to have countered that. He felt buoyant now, almost energized. 

“I feel good,” he said, smiling at Baz. “How do you feel? How was it?”

Baz didn’t have any blood on him, on his mouth or anything. He had cut him so cleanly, Simon felt a weird sense of misplaced pride.

“I feel okay,” Baz said slowly. 

“Really?” Simon said. “You’re not feeling any urges to devour me?”

“Simon—”

“I shouldn’t get the stake ready?”

“ _Simon_ —” Baz began, exasperated, but then stopped. He looked at Simon and a look of relief began to steal onto his face. He smiled softly and put an arm around Simon’s neck to pull him close. “Thank you,” he said, leaning their foreheads together.

*

Over the next couple of days, they closely monitored both themselves and each other. Baz kept staring at him trying to look for early signs of vampirism. "Do you feel hungry at all? Do you think your sense of smell has changed?" He kept asking.

"I feel the same! Cut it out!" Simon snapped back after the third time.

"If I had a cut on my lip and my blood got in your cut—" Baz pursued doggedly.

"But you didn't. It didn't."

The actual strange thing wasn't that Simon became hungry for blood, but that Baz stopped being hungry for it. It wasn't until three days after that Baz felt hungry enough to go out and feed.

"Maybe because human blood has more vampire nutrients, you need less of it to go on," Simon had suggested after Baz came home from draining several rats.

And it seemed to be true. When Baz drank from animals, he needed to drink every night and he seemed to need a lot more blood to be satisfied. From Simon, he had barely drank a mouthful before he stopped and it had carried him for several days. He looked healthier too, almost more...human. There was more color in his face in the two days after that night than Simon had ever seen.

To Simon, the implications were extraordinary. He could tell Baz was considering them too. If they could find a reliable source of human blood, he wouldn't have to go out to hunt every night, skulking around alleyways and risking getting caught. They would have to find some kind of alternative source though because Baz flatly refused to feed on Simon again.

"How can you say no to the most obvious solution?" Simon exclaimed when they'd talked about it.

"Look I don't know what that therapist has been telling you, but there's no way that having one person relying on draining their boyfriend for survival will lead to a healthy relationship dynamic," Baz snapped. "We tried it once because you wanted to see what would happen and now we know so it's done."

As if he would tell his therapist about Baz being a vampire, thought Simon but he bit his retort back. It could be that Baz had a point.

Neither of them knew what to do with the guinea pig. When Saturday came and went with Baz reporting that he didn't feel the need to feed, Simon had to go back to the pet store to buy kibble for the thing after all. And by then they had started getting attached to it. Simon had brought home a little hamster wheel too and they liked watching it run around in circles in it. When Monday night came around and Baz finally started feeling thirsty again, he decided he would rather go out and hunt than drink the guinea pig, which he had named Snow, in sheer contradiction to its black fur.

They also finally told Penny a week later. Simon had wanted to avoid telling her because he knew she would be upset about the risk they had taken and true to form, she had yelled at them for 20 straight minutes. But after she’d stopped yelling, she had said, “What if we go to a blood bank?”

Of course they couldn’t exactly walk up to a blood bank and ask for pints of blood to take home so they planned it out like a caper. Penny and Baz used spells to sneak in undetected one night and grabbed several blood bags to take out with them. Out of a fit of conscience, Penny multiplied a few of the bags that were already there so no blood would be found missing. Simon fulfilled his somewhat pointless duty as a lookout faithfully and helped them carry the bags back to the flat to stuff into their fridge. Later, whenever Baz took one out to drink from, Simon couldn’t help thinking that they looked like gruesome Caprisun juices, but it was a good solution in the end. It meant Baz didn’t have to go out hunting every night and was able to get the nutrients he needed from human blood, without any of the danger or guilt. They had to go back every few months to get more but that seemed like a small risk to take.

“So you see,” Simon couldn’t help but say to Baz later. “It was a good idea to try it with me after all.”

They were lying on the couch together watching TV after dinner, Snow the guinea pig rattling around his cage in the corner. Baz curled around Simon, his nose in Simon’s hair. They could do this now, since Baz didn’t have to run out every evening to hunt.

Simon couldn’t see Baz rolling his eyes, but he thought he felt the gesture all the same. But to his surprise, he also felt Baz dropping a kiss to his cheek. 

“You were right, Simon Snow,” he said, soft and sweet.


End file.
